Who could possibly have imagined this oil disaster would happen? Santa Barbarans, that's who.

[Hekate]

Who could have foretold that the oil company wouldn't have an effective plan? Or that they would lie about the extent of the damage until the mess was too big to ignore?

Well, hell, the County of Santa Barbara and its citizens have been trying to fight these bastards -- regulate them -- make them accountable to SOMEONE -- pretty much without outside help (or so it feels) -- since the all-out Union Oil Co. disaster of 1969. The oil companies have deeper pockets and more lawyers than any local entity of well under half a million people can hope to have. Onshore drilling operations in recent years were allowed to foul creeks with surface leaks. The companies have consistently refused to use pipelines instead of ships (which locals believe would be safer) for transporting product from onshore operations.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/green/Santa-Barbara-1969-Remembering-Californias-own-oil-rig-disaster-92499169.html
>>> On January 29, 1969 a blowout occurred on Union Oil Co. oil rig some six miles off the coast of Summerland, Calif. Similar to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the 1969 accident involved a natural gas blowout from a well nearly 3,500 ft. below the ocean floor. The short term fix by capping the the break created a much larger problem as pressure began building undersea that caused breaks along a fault on the ocean floor that vented out thousands of gallons of oil and gas.
>snip<
For more than a week, some 200,000 gallons of oil spread out over 750 miles, coating the California coastline for more than 30 miles with sludge from Rincon Point to Goleta along the Santa Barbara shoreline. The oil slick would later impact Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands.
>snip<
Then President Richard Nixon issued a statement on the California oil spill: "It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people." <<<

The modern environmental movement was born, the conscience of the American people was touched, Nixon actually wasn't bad on the environment, but the oil companies rolled on.

Exxon Valdez? Double-hulled tankers? Pfft. Who's going to force them to use double-hulled tankers?

Further north in San Luis Obispo County, the little town of Avila Beach had to be virtually demolished in the 1999 cleanup of an underground spill that went on for decades.

http://www.seattlepi.com/pipelines/avil10.shtml
>>> For decades, Avila Beach served as a sponge, soaking up about 400,000 gallons of crude oil, gasoline and diesel that slowly leaked through a network of underground pipelines that ran from a bluff overlooking the town, along the beachfront and to Unocal's pier a mile to the west.
"This is the most devastating thing that could happen to a community," said Roger Mackenzie, 48, an 18-year resident who will move to a hotel later this month with the $2,000 relocation money Unocal granted him. "Here's a town that's getting ripped up. People's lives are totally destroyed."
For almost 90 years, until 1996, Union Oil Co. pumped up to 2 million gallons of crude oil and petroleum products per year along the two-mile stretch of pipeline.
In 1989, a local business preparing to develop property tested the soil and found it was contaminated. Nine years later, Unocal entered an $18 million agreement to clean up the spill.
In a decision that still evokes much heartache, San Luis Obispo County and the Regional Water Quality Control Board voted to dig up the contaminated soil and rebuild the town's beachfront from scratch. Unocal did not want to excavate, preferring alternative methods such as using oil-eating microorganisms to clean the contaminated soil.
But after a furious debate that divided neighbors, workers last fall began to demolish the entire beachfront. After the buildings are razed, excavators will remove enough contaminated soil to pile a football field 60 feet high.
Little is left of the town's commercial hub except deep, gaping holes and mounds of sand and dirt piled 20 feet high. A thin sheen of oil rises from the sand that once welcomed generations of sunbathers and family picnickers. <<<snip<

The oil companies basically do whatever the hell they want and when they are caught they ignore authorities and citizens if at all possible. When they cause something really, really bad they go "Oops" and still take no responsibility until they are forced to.

President Obama is said to be rethinking his go-ahead to further offshore drilling. I hope he thinks long and hard. He's making great strides toward green (or greenish) energy for this country, and it all can't be done overnight. But the sheer wanton arrogance of the oil companies, like that of Wall Street, needs to be brought under control.

:rant:

Hekate

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. He needs to go from "rethinking" ---

to doing, and we need to give him the shove.

[Hekate]

2. ~*~

shameless self-kick